Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins is so moved by a
shipwreck that he starts writing again.
Exiles: A Novel byRon Hansen [LA Times Review]:
..."Hopkins, with his maverick genius and candid self-abnegation, is a fascinating character. He gave up poetry for religion. Gave up intimacy rather than face his sexuality. Gave up his social and intellectual position…
The conflicts that architected the poet's life were interior, often passionate, and terrifically subtle. Animating those conflicts is Hansen's challenge; yet the inherent obstacles of religious expression, combined with a profound respect for this historical figure, appear to dog the novelist. Hansen's portrait seems to at once settle on and scurry from the mysteries of Hopkins' mind. Take this exchange between Hopkins and a fellow seminarian:
"Smiling as he took the page from him, Hopkins seemed happy to have disappointed. 'Oh, it's a wreck this "Wreck." My rhymes carry over from one line into another, and there's a peculiar chiming inspired by Welsh poetry, and a great many more oddnesses that cannot but dismay an editor's eye. I shan't publish it. The journals will think it barbarous.'
"Splaine asked, 'Why write it, then?'
"In puzzlement Hopkins replied, 'Why pray?' "
Religious literature seldom shrinks from such questions. Yet Hansen shies away from penetrating too deeply into the emotional conflicts of these characters. Questions of faith seem to be articles of faith -- assumed but not posited or explored…
… Loathed for a love men knew in them, / Banned by the land of their birth, / Rhine refused them. Thames would ruin them."
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